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hankwang writes "Did you know that Microsoft has ethical guidelines? It's good to know that 'Microsoft did not make any payments to foreign government officials' while lobbying for OOXML, and that 'Microsoft conducts its business in compliance with laws designed to promote fair competition' every time they suppressed competitors. In their Corporate Citizenship section, they discuss how the customer-focused approach creates products that work well with those of competitors and open-source solutions. So all the reverse-engineering by Samba and OpenOffice.org developers wasn't really necessary."

Microsoft has really lost it when it comes to evil these days. Apple's evil is just ridiculously better [today.com]. Microsoft's evil was damn fine in the 1990s, but these days it's just... sorta lame. I mean, Vista - what dismally poorly executed evil! And the Zune, oh dear.

So trying to be good is all that's left to them. Can they go straight? Or will it be straight back to crime?

Microsoft is just misunderstood. People think that Microsoft is a software company, but it isn't. Microsoft is an abuse company that sells software as a way of delivering abuse. Microsoft's evil is not a side-effect of their management philosophy, Microsoft's evil is their business model.

Microsoft isn't evil. It simply spends a lot of it's time exploring the boundaries of the law around the world. And when you explore boarders, half the time you're on one side and the rest on the other side.

All in an effort to help the children (new corporations).

So they will know "You can go this far without getting into trouble. You can go this much further, and pay a small fine after doing it for 10 years. You can go twice as far, but then the fine will be 10 times higher, but you will only have to pay it 50 years later." And so on...

You know that if you backdated this a month or two, you could afford fifteen iPod Touch (32GB) units, two MacBook Pros (the kind released tomorrow), an Apple TV, Time Capsule and a partridge in a... no, I mean a few iTunes gift cards.

Mostly it was just stupid. It was Microsoft snatching defeat from the jaws of victory: really pretty good hardware, but with mediocre firmware and terrible, terrible on-PC software. If they'd just left the thing hackable, every Leengux weenie in the world would have bought one to Rockbox it. But nooo, control took precedence over making some actual money.

Another example is the Xbox 360 - a great console with great games, they were even going to make a profit from it... until they cut corners so badly that

"....Microsoft provides a broad range of policies, programs, and products that are focused on our commitment to responsible and ethical business practices that promote user choice, industry opportunity, interoperability, and transparency....."

Last I checked Microsoft's Exchange Server works well only with IE. Unlike Gmail or Yahoo mail. Exchange is lousy with Firefox, Opera or Safari. Where is the choice?

And Exchange Server 2008 I belive even screws up the IMAP support, so Thunderbird users get the bird as well... So much for interoperability and transparency.

You can pick any browser you want from these alternatives: IE6, IE7, IE8

Not always. You can't pick IE6 AND Vista. Many sites work well only with IE6.

Recent versions of Exchange Server work well only with IE7 or later. So in a Corporate setting with Win2K systems running IE6 for the Corporate Intranet, things get very clunky and unmanagable. Add multiple versions of SharePoint, Office, Active Directory... and pretty soon, you realise even Microsoft's products do not work well between and amnongst themselves. Unless you upgrade all of them, all at once. Which is pretty much impractical and terribly expensive.

> why the heck should a company spend the time and money to "update" them to IE 7?

What, apart from the obvious?!

IE 6 is about 7-8 years old and is CRAP. If you're happy to continue using that browser so that your intranet works, then feel free, but don't complain on here when you can't use the rest of the Internet when web developers stop supporting IE6 (as many have already done).

> like making money for *us* instead of for MS.

How, exactly does updating your intranet site so it works on IE7 (you know

Ummm. To promote user choice within Microsoft's product line of course.

Take standards. You participate in standards in order to increase the size of the market for your goods. Then you try to capture as much as that market as possible buy creating a "superior" implementation of that standard. The fact that this locks in the customer doesn't mean the customer didn't have a choice. Anybody who has thought about vendor lock in realizes that the element of buyer choice is critical in making it possible.

I don't know if it works in IE7, but if you want one that doesn't work well in IE6 you're looking at it. Misplaced and overlapping sections, buttons that don't appear to do anything (metamoderation)...

What's been implemented is standards compliant. No, not 100% of Exchange web functionality available in IE is available to non IE browsers, but the 95% common functionality there is between the 2 implementations will work on any major browser - see http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/09/13/428901.aspx [msexchangeteam.com] for a brief rundown of what won't work on non-IE browsers.

Finally, if you're looking for a web only email solution, don't use Exchange; that's not what it's designed for.

There is no way to search your messages from any browser except IE... that is a broken email program!

I don't expect it to be as feature-rich as Outlook, and I don't even care if IE has more features... but SEARCH? As a result, I forward all of my mail to a gmail account. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what if my gmail is compromised. Cry me a river.

Uhm, Exchange 2003 at least certainly works with FireFox - I use it daily. It may not be as rich as the environment you get with IE, but it certainly is perfectly usable.

But why? It looks like it's been specifically engineered that way, not anything technologically lacking in Firefox or Opera. Try replying to a neat HTML email in Firefox and it reverts to basic text, and looks terribly ugly. Also a simple plain vanilla email from Firefox is rendered in a miniscule size font when read with IE.

Why? How about because Firefox wasn't there when Exchange 2003 was released? Because Netscape didn't have an XMLHTTP facility; Ajax came from IE and Outlook Web access.

But no, really it's a conspiracy that MS didn't have a soothsayer on the Exchange team so they could plan from a browser that wouldn't be created for another year, and when there wasn't a standard way of accessing what was, at the time, an IE only extension. Damn them. DAMN THEM TO HELL.

Before I wrap up, I'd like to address the question we often receive about why OWA Premium doesn't work in non IE browsers. The following is heavily plagiarized from others who have answered this question as well (thanks Kristian!), and if after reading this you are still unclear as to why Premium doesn't work on Firefox, please feel free to post your questions here and I'll do my best to answer them.

Shockingly, the decision to make OWA Premium only work on IE6+ has nothing to do with forcing people to use other Microsoft products (sorry to have to dispel the conspiracy, and just when Oliver Stone and Kevin Costner were starting pre-production on "OWA: The Movie "). The decision was made, simply enough, due to costs, time, and customer need.

The browser support we have for OWA Premium and OWA Light is due to usage share among our customers, and the development and test investment it takes to support additional browsers/versions. This doesn't mean the browser statistics for "browsers hitting OWA", which would be skewed based on our previous browser support. We look at the browser statistics for "browsers used on the Internet" and "browsers used within our customer organizations", as well as listening to what customers are asking for, since statistics, surveys, site logs, and research firms never tell the full story. The browser matrix of OWA is about where we allocate our investments, and the need of additional browser support as compared to the need for all the other OWA features our customers want. We have limited resources, limited time, and a very large set of potential features.

I understand it would be a PITA for them to add in support for 'premium' features in every browser, but FireFox has shown to be pretty popular in general. It's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy to say "we don't add in these features for other browsers because nobody is using those browsers for OWA". If they added in support for those features in firefox they'd probably find the percentage of users using firefox for OWA increases a lot. I know I used to fire up IE just to use OWA.

Well, OWA for Exchange 2003 doesn't ask to install any ActiveX components so I'm not so sure. Perhaps 2007 does use ActiveX. From later on in the same page the guy continued his excuses by talking about having lots of premium features that would need tweaked for them to work in other browsers, so I had thought it was more of a DOM issue.

Well, OWA for Exchange 2003 doesn't ask to install any ActiveX components so I'm not so sure.

I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to have hard-coded into IE something like "hey, this is the OWA ActiveX...it's cool...install it without asking the user regardless of the security settings they have".

* Vague platitudes and general statements of the obvious* Poetic idealism interspersed with wishful thinking* A statement that boils down to "We do what we can get away with, no more no less. If it was wrong it would be illegal, wouldn't it?"

You know, sometimes you'll find organisations with the most detailed and extensive ethical guidelines imaginable. And in the same cupboard you'll find several inches of dust. "A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, Nothing else" (Gandhi, M).

Whats funny is that at least what is posted is not MS ethics. Those are Federal laws. They can call them ethics if they want, but not paying off foreign officials is not an ethical question. Its a legal one.

Anything to do with gaining favor from a foreign government is strictly illegal. (except for attempts to speed up what is the natural process)

I'll point out that they've had a big anti-trust target painted on their foreheads (both in the US and the EU) for a long long time now. I'm sure they actually do spend a lot of time making sure they don't run afoul of the local regulators, watchdog groups and newspapers.

Having said that, Microsoft?? Ethics??? hahahahaha LET THE BASHING BEGIN! Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of assholes!

The opening post displays a startling lack of insight as far as the purpose of having a Code of Conduct is concerned.

There really do seem to be people who believe that a Code of Conduct is there to limit what a company can do. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First and foremost, a Code of Conduct is an integral part of the company's PR effort. Every self-respecting company has to have one. It's cool to have one, and you look stupid and unsophisticated if you don't. Besides, there is no need to be without. There are templates with good-sounding Codes of Conduct that are guaranteed to leave everyone a comfortably free hand.

Secondly: damage limitation. A Code of Conduct is there to be able to shield a company from legal consequences of unethical conduct by it's employees on its behalf. If an employee is caught red-handed, it really helps if a company is able to state (truthfully) that this action contravenes their official Code of Conduct. This can really limit the damage.

My own employers have an ethics code which is 33 pages of closely-spaced Maoist gibberish, most of which has nothing at all to do with the ethics of company, or managerial, behaviour and much of which is actually exhortations to blind obedience for employees. All corporations tend to authoritarianism, and these are the people who actually own the world, while blathering about freedom and democracy. The truth is that anyone employed by a large corporation spends most of their waking hours living in a totalitarian dictatorship - could this be what is wrong with Western Civilisation?

My employer's senior VPs got caught bribing middle eastern royals some years ago in a very public scandal. To atone for their sins, the corporation must implement a 23-point ethics recovery plan contrived by outside consultants. What really pisses off the rank and file employees of this multinational is that we're the ones being forced to watch to a never-ending stream of training videos (like the VD films of past eras) when it's the Rolex and pinkie ring crowd that should get the Clockwork Orange treatment

Oh, but Microsoft's public 'donations' are never without strings. They should be more appropriately be thought of as deep discounts on their products in order to foster lock-in.

So when those deep discounts are being given to governments, especially when those governments are contemplating the sovereignty issues inherent in being locked-in to a single vendor, you have to start wondering whether or not the word 'bribe' isn't more appropriate. Microsoft is basically using economic inducements to entice gover

"We find the word 'no' to be a bit strong, and not in the best interest of the company or some of its stock holders. For this reason, 'some' evil is allowed if it increases long term growth or profits. Or if Steve Ballmer wishes it. Please keep this in mind in your dealings as we do not want employees to become confused that they are working for Google."

Funny how they say "Microsoft conducts its business in compliance with laws designed to promote fair competition" instead of "Microsoft will not engage in unfair competition". Gotta keep those loopholes open!

More importantly - why bother to write that you'll do something that is a legal obligation anyway (debates about whether MS broke it are irrelevant). If they wrote "Microsoft will not conduct its business in compliance with laws designed to promote fair competition", then they'd be showing intention of breaking the law - there is no other interpretation.

So what they've stated is basically a statutory requirement of them anyway. This is the sort of things that should warn you off a company - that they "agr

Microsoft is not evil, they have merely raised incompetence to a level that's indistinguishable from malice. Redmond is not capable of the consistency of purpose and execution that really good evil requires.

The problem with tags like these is that they get overused so that every story by kdawson ends up with one. One might argue that this might be entirely warranted due to constant bias, but it still looks like a knee-jerk reaction to any post. It dilutes the term when used too much.

In this case: yes, it does seem unfair to associate these ethical guidelines with the reverse-engineering that went on prior to the guidelines being published. The work on Samba started over a decade before the Microsoft document w

MS bashing has been happening since Windows 95, and has since then become part of geek culture. It's all but automatic now, and just for fun. Like Chuck Norris jokes and the like. And you do know that this is/. right?

In the nineties a friend of mine also used to get angry when I bashed MS (again just for fun), and it really confounded me that he would get so angry. Perhaps you can enlighten me?

what makes you think i give a shit about MS in the slightest? as i pointed out, they are no different to any other large company when it comes to this stuff. if anyone actually got angry about MS or linux bashing it'd be pointless, MS isn't going to love you for defending them.

You're completely correct. Only their past actions make MS seem evil. A document about their ethics is mere window dressing.

(I kid, I kid! Not on this, but on other things, I kid, I kid! I mean, which other company has destroyed the competition in such a way? Outside munitions manufacturers, that is? But hey, they've got good ideas about ethics these days. It's just a shame their management can't take time out of their vital puppy-strangling projects to read them! Try

There's some other registry tweaks that may apply and you can google for them. The above referenced MS article makes it sound as if all those DHCP servers are implemented incorrectly but then when Vista is the only client having trouble.........

Actually, both sides are at fault in the spirit if not in the letter of the RFC.

The broadcast flag is included as a work around for a nasty catch 22 situation that some network interfaces might suffer from, namely not being able to receive unicast IP packets until they have been configured with an IP address. This means that such an interface cannot receive its own IP address in an IP packet which is what the DHCP server would normally use.